Doctor's Orders
by TwiFic Doctorward Contest
Summary: What started out as a normal day at work, ends up in a trip to the ER, and a prescription Bella didn't see coming. Entry for the TwiFic Doctorward Contest.


******Twific Doctorward Contest**

**Title: **Doctor's Orders

**Prompt #: **48

**Pairing: **Edward/Bella

**Genre:** Romance

**Summary: **What started out as a normal day at work, ends up in a trip to the ER, and a prescription Bella didn't see coming.

**Word count: **2179

**Disclaimer: **The author does not own any publicly recognizable entities herein. No copyright infringement is intended.

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"Shit."

"Uh-oh."

The next five minutes are a blur as my assistant runs for the first aid kit while I slowly collapse to the floor, squeezing the crap out of my bloody hand. The gash is wrapped, but already begins seeping through as I'm lead out to the delivery van.

We argue over who should drive.

Alice has three major accidents and a glove box full of speeding tickets under her belt where as I cannot drive due to the face that my face now resembles Casper the friendly ghost.

She promises she'll be super careful.

I throw up from the blood loss before she can even secure my seatbelt.

She's a dutiful assistant and friend, trying to keep me calm when in reality she's the one freaking out.

"It's all my fault. I should'a told you I sharpened all the knives while you were chattin' about tonight's menu with the wait staff," she mutters, angrily wiping tears from her face.

"You should'a been more careful. You know how accident prone you get when you're PMSing..."

"Alice." I groan, holding my hand above my heart like Mike, our head busboy, instructed before I was whisked away to County General. "Shut up and focus on driving."

"Okay. Okay. Okay."

She fiddles with the radio, fumbles with her bag for a piece of gum, and checks my hair for pieces of celery that rained down on me when I collapsed. She pretty much does everything besides focusing on the road and the speed limit.

We breeze through a red light and I glance over my shoulder as the camera flashes.

"You're paying for that."

"Dang it!"

Somehow the terrible driver is able to park the bigger than your average delivery truck in a spot entirely too small. Sure, she has to climb out of the back before helping me squeeze out of the passenger side but still.

I arrive at the hospital safe and sound, for the most part.

"How's the hand, B?"

"Throbbing like a son of a bitch," I mutter.

Speaking of bitch, the nurse at the front desk greets the two of us with a frown.

I don't think I've ever been to the hospital and come across a polite nurse at the admission desk in the ER.

She tells me to fill out paperwork and then gets all sorts of pissy with me when I tell her I can't write, seeing as my dominant hand is out of commission due to the giant gash down my palm.

Alice snatches the clipboard out of Nurse Ratchet's hand and leads me to the waiting area.

"My cousin's gonna come down and get you as soon as we have you registered with grouchy over there," she tells me, scribbling my information down without question.

"You didn't tell me your cousin works here..." I rock back and forth in an effort to try to block out the throbbing pain in my hand.

"Yes,I did. I tried settin' the two of you up when he moved down here from Cali a coupl'a months ago." She signs my name and stands up with a smirk. "Both of you refused to meet one another and now look. I always get my way."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

By the time the nurse has gone over my paperwork, taken her time to call me back for my blood pressure and temperature and other non-cut related questions, I'm at the end of my rope with patients.

She grimaces when I explain what happened, comments that I must be new to the chef life, seeing as I made a rookie mistake whilst cutting veggies, and finally shuts up when I tell her to put a cork in it.

By the time I'm released from her little closet of torture, Alice's cousin has arrived and it takes me a minute to find any sort of family resemblance.

She's super short and he's wicked tall.

She talks like she just fell off the back of a tractor and he's got a smooth as butter, easy going but incredibly smart way of words.

The only thing they seem to have in common is the crazy hair. Alice's twenty shades of wild sticks up every which way while his reddish brown hair does just the same... and the eyes.

I once accused Alice of wearing colored contacts because no one has crystal green eyes like hers.

"Oh, there's the clumsy ol' fool now." She smiles. "Bella, this is my cuz, Edward. Edward, this is my best friend, boss and my lesbian lover when certain situations arise."

I wave pitifully and he smiles brilliantly.

We're talking Colgate commercial worthy chompers.

"I like your scrubs," I blurt out because I've lost a lot of blood and I'm sort of stupid around pretty boys.

"We like to make the kids as comfortable as possible." His eyes crinkle. "It's a little less scary when the dude shoving needles in your arm has your favorite cartoon character emblazoned all over their body."

Alice smirks.

"Ed's always had a soft spot for Scooby Doo. We used to watch every Saturday morning in our pj's... well Ed only slept in his box-"

"I'm sure Bella's in a lot of pain and would appreciate getting seen without a debriefing of what I wore to bed when I was ten." His ears are a little red from embarrassment and I find that really, really adorable. "I hope you don't mind taking care of this up in pediatrics... I need to get back up there."

"No, it's fine."

Alice wraps her arm around my waist and Edward leads the way to the elevators.

The mystery machine has never looked so good.

Alice snorts like a pig.

"Oh my god!" I whisper. "Please tell me I didn't just say that out loud."

"I could... but that'd be lyin' and you know me." She smirks. "Betcha regrettin' not lettin' me hook y'all up now, aren't cha?"

Edward seems rather interested in the sleeve of his undershirt when we catch up with him, but I'd rather just pretend that there's no way he heard anything we've just said.

"Bella?" Alice giggles.

"Yeah... just a little," I mutter.

"Just a little what?" he asks.

"Just a little pain in the giant cut on my palm. Alice likes to ask obvious questions, you know?" I hipcheck my partner in crime, my own little way of telling her not to embarrass me or else.

"Lucky for you I've got the hook up." Edward smiles. "I've already got a nurse setting us up in an exam room with the good stuff."

We enter the pediatrics wing and I fall in love with the goofy boy that he becomes in front of the little kids that litter the hallway.

There are pictures hanging everywhere.

Masterpieces in their own little way.

Stick figures, sunny days and loads of smiles.

Edward picks up a tiny girl with no hair and three missing teeth. She kisses his cheek with chapped lips, but he doesn't seem fazed as he maneuvers the IVs that hang from her arm.

"Molly, how'd you sneak out of your room without Nurse Rose seeing?" He tickles her side softly and she gives a weak giggle.

"Her left and so I snuck out super quiet," she whispers, loudly enough for us to hear. "I wanna color some more and I runned out of paper."

Alice and I follow the two of them to a colorful room filled with machines and two beds.

Edward sets his tiny patient up on her bed and reattaches her fluids before pulling a pack of construction paper out of a random cupboard.

"I hid this in here while you were getting x-rays earlier because I knew you were running low, dollface." He pushes her table over and gives her a big bucket of markers. "Now, let's try to keep the ink on the paper and when I get back from helping Miss Bella and my cousin, I expect two new pictures."

Her eyes go wide.

"Two?"

"Of course! A new one for my desk and one for my new friends." He turns to me. "Every person with good taste should have a Molly Montgomery original in their collection."

He turns back to his patient.

"It's true. I got my Molly picture the first time I came to visit Ed with lunch," Alice whispers.

"I have faith in you, Molly." He kisses the top of her head, covers it with a beanie, and motions for us to follow him out of the room.

"How's she doin',Ed?" Alice asks softly as I get situated on an exam table.

He tries to focus on removing the yards of gauze from my hand, but his smile fades slightly.

"Doctor Banner has done everything he can to get her to the top of the transplant list, but we've yet to find a suitable donor." He moves over to the sink to wash his hands. "Molly's special... even down to her blood."

"I think I'm going to go sit with her while you sew Bella up." She turns to me. "Do you mind?"

I shake my head and turn back to the good doctor.

"If you don't mind my asking…"

"Molly's in need of a bone marrow transplant, but we've yet to find a match for her. The oncologist in charge of her case hasn't given her much time." He swallows thickly and pulls his sleeves up revealing an array of colors.

I snort despite the situation.

"Molly and her roommate, Darcy, like to give tattoos. I'm their favorite canvas." He smiles and points to a purple heart on his wrist.

"They do good work. I might have to talk to them when I'm ready to expand my sleeve." I pull the sleeve of my chef jacket up, revealing my art.

"Oh, Molly would love that. Her dad's a tattoo artist and she's spent a lot of time in his shop."

I smile back and try to focus on something other than the fact that he's jabbing a needle into my hand and sewing my palm back together.

I kind of wish Alice was here.

Edward must know that I'm uneasy with the situation and starts some small talk while he works.

"So, what do you like to do when you aren't slicing yourself up with knives?"

"I like to run a tight ship at my restaurant... and when I'm not there, I like to go to other restaurants and eat their food."

"Really?" He looks up from his work. "You don't find it difficult to eat someone else's cooking?"

"Pshh… I'm feeding the town four out of seven nights a week... when I'm off I don't even want to think about cooking something for myself. It's nice to be on the other side of the kitchen door for a change."

"I bet."

He cuts the thread and reaches for some form of sticky gauze.

"What about other people's cooking? Are you extremely judgmental when you go to a friend's house for a cookout or buy something from a kid at a bake sale?"

"No." I smile guiltily. "Ok… maybe a little."

He tapes my hand up and kisses my palm.

I look at him questioningly.

"What can I say? I'm a pediatrician and I'm told my kisses make my patients feel better. It's habit."

"Uh-huh," I chuckle.

"You know... had I known you were the girl Ali was trying to hook me up with when I first moved down here, I might have agreed." He runs a hand through his hair and smiles bashfully. "I mean… the only reason why I declined was because I'd been in town for three days and she bombarded me with her matchmaking plot the morning before I had to pull a forty-eight hour shift here. The possibility of dating was the furthest thing from my mind."

I watch him clean up everything.

"That's funny. I told her to stop trying to meddle in my love life because I thought she was going to try to hook me up with a pretentious asshole with a god complex."

Edward guffaws.

"Not all doctors are like that, you know."

"Now I do… but a couple of months ago I was oblivious."

He pulls out his prescription pad.

"The numbing agent's gonna wear off before the end of the night and you'll be cursing my name." He rips off a sheet. "This is for the pain, every four to six hours for the next couple of days... no heavy activity at work. That's why you have my cousin."

I laugh.

Another prescription.

"This one is for an antibiotic. You can't get your stitches wet and you want to keep the wound as clean as possible."

Another prescription.

"And my phone number and schedule for the next week or so... so I can check the progress of your healing and maybe let you judge my cooking skills."

"Did you just write me a prescription for a date?"

He nods. "Doctor's orders."

I laugh.

"I really hope my insurance covers this."

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**Thank you for reading! Please leave the author some love and remember to come back to vote after May 24th!**


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